


Left His Heart

by SliceOSunshine



Category: The Flash (TV 2014), The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Season 6 Spectulation, Season 6 spoilers up to Episode 18, necking, so much drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24025918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SliceOSunshine/pseuds/SliceOSunshine
Summary: In which the Flash finds out why Pied Piper hates him after Crisis.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Hartley Rathaway
Comments: 11
Kudos: 64





	Left His Heart

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this on a whim last night, and I wanted to get it finished before the new episode releases later tonight, so it's un-betaed and might read a bit rushed. Feel free to let me know of any glaring errors you spot in the commets.
> 
> I've been mulling over what could possibly be bad enough to make Hartley look at Barry that way in the Jewelry Store in episode 13, and I think I've settled on a speculated guess that's probably nowhere near the right answer, but makes for a great fanfic storyline. ~~If it turns out it's a Hartley/David thing, then I vibe with that too~~
> 
> Another side-note: canon divergance in that, in this fic, Barry and Iris are just best friends and not married, as I can't imagine a single situation where Barry "I love my wife" Allen would ever cheat on her.

Relief felt like pain when the vibrating hand plunged into his chest. When you’re a speedster, your life doesn’t flash before your eyes before you die; Barry knew from experience. No, speedsters always thought up until the very last moment they would outrun death. But as Barry’s last flickers of speed crackled and spit out around him, he met the hate-filled eyes across from him and remembered how he spent his last minutes alive.

Even thirty minutes ago, he perceived the ticking down of invisible clocks—on his speed, on saving Iris, on stopping Godspeed—and hated himself just a little more each step for not reaching the condemned building _faster._ He was chasing a lead, a Hail Mary miracle, while time chased him, and with every echoing creak of rotted stairs and empty silence of abandoned rooms, time closed the gap.

Barry found him just when he sensed those incorporeal claws catching at the back of his neck. Or rather, Hartley Rathaway found _him,_ snooping as Barry was in the young man’s make-shift hideout—and how could Barry resist looking around at the green fabric draped from the rafters like curtains turned ghosts, at the flute laid across the pile of blankets like a vagabond stealing a moment’s rest, at the unfilled loot bags that gaped their hollow insides like empty stomachs left gutted for any voyeur to see.

“To what do I owe this displeasure, Flash?” Hartley rasped off to Barry’s right.

Barry whipped around at the voice. “Hartley—”

_“Pied Piper_ _,_ and not so fast. My gloves trained on you are set to a frequency designed to liquidate your insides.” He stepped out from behind a long bolt of swaying fabric with hands outstretched and an unfriendly smile slowly crawling across his face. “Think you can persuade me not to use them?”

“Har—” Barry cleared his throat. “Pied Piper, I need your help.”

The laugh that escaped Hartley was sharp and unkind and cut at Barry’s memory of the first time he startled a delighted laugh from the man another timeline ago. “Oh, your jokes are always the cruelest, aren’t they? And see, I’ve learned to laugh along.”

Barry’s eyes scanned Hartley’s expression for any trace of the man he knew before Crisis. Searching as he was, he saw the false mirth slide from his face and dawning realization slip into its place. Just like at the jewelry store weeks ago, disbelief stole across his eyes and left his mouth agape.

“You’re _serious?”_

Taking that as an opening, Barry said, “Yes. Very important people are trapped in some kind of mirror dimension, and there’s an evil speedster on the loose. I’m losing my speed, and I can’t do this on my own. Hartley—” Barry braved a step toward Hartley who was mouthing the words _very important_ as though involuntarily tasting them “—you’re skilled and dedicated and _compassionate_ _._ There’s no one else I would _want_ to turn to, which is good because I’m counting on you.”

“You _dare—?”_ Hartley looked stricken, and he choked on the words, though it could easily have been on the dust, his eyes flashing a myriad of emotions in the gloom of the room before closing off. “You and I both know I’m the last person you would ever turn to for help. Either you really are all out of options, or you’re here to take me back to Iron Heights, and this is all just a new game for you. Well, _Flash,_ keep playing and you’ll find out you’re not the only one good at _toying_ with others.” 

“I’m not—But we’re friends, Piper. Of course I would come to you.”

Hartley strode into Barry’s space and snarled into his face. _“Friends?!”_

In that moment, it took all of Barry’s willpower to not flinch back at the fierce twist of Piper’s mouth and the fury lighting his eyes. Not for the first time, Barry cursed Crisis for all the ways it tangled the fabric of his life into unrecognizable knots. Swallowing hard, he whispered, _“Please._ Help me.”

“And what will you do for my help?”

“Anything.”

“Anything? Oh, Flash, what a dangerous thing to offer your enemy.”

_But you’re not my enemy,_ Barry didn’t say. And despite himself, he flashed back to when half a saint offered the same thing to three-quarters a sinner and ended up with an empty transport truck, a recordless criminal, and a luckless lesson learned. “Anything,” he murmured.

Hartley’s gaze became calculating, his head tilting in that way that Barry recognized as him working on a particularly difficult scientific puzzle. Then that creeping smile from earlier returned, stopping before stretching too wide. 

“All right, _Flash,”_ he purred and lifted a gloved hand to press against Barry’s chest. He applied enough pressure to force Barry into walking backwards until the splinter-filled wall brushed his back. “I always did say you looked like a _fantasy_ in leather.”

The challenge was clear under the flirtation in the head-to-toe sweep Hartley did of Barry then. So, giving the man before him his best crooked grin, Barry said, “Can’t touch a fantasy, but you can touch me.”

That drew Hartley up short, his shoulders tensing as his eyes flicked back and forth between Barry’s, searching for deceit. Either finding none or burying the doubt for now, his sharp grin brought back the flirtatious air he had been affecting earlier. “I’m going to remove my gloves, _dear_ _,_ and if I sense even a hint of speed, I’ll sonic-screech you through this wall. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” 

Cool hands brushed against the sides of Barry’s exposed face under the cowl, gentle as they were cautious. They slid underneath the mask and, in a sharp tug upward, shoved his cowl off.

“Well, hello,” Hartley breathed, genuine surprise and wonder softening the hard lines in his face.

With a start, Barry realized this Hartley must have never seen the man beneath the costume. For the first time, real uncertainty crept through his mind, but he banished it a second later by replying, “I know, almost as cute as you.”

A flush burst across Hartley's cheeks at the accompanying wink Barry sent his way, and he crowded into Barry’s space with a scowl. “Hush. This is my show, Flash. And the only one allowed to steal it is me.”

Barry bit off his response as those fingers returned to his skin, this time trailing slowly down his neck, ghosting in a barely there touch until they hooked into the material of his suit at the collar and unwrapped him until his shoulders were bare. The entire time, Hartley’s eyes remained intensely locked onto his face—waiting for what, Barry couldn’t have said. A shiver ran through Barry when that ghost-touch glided across his collarbones and came to rest at his shoulders.

Not even trying to hide his smirk, Hartley maintained eye contact with Barry as he lowered his head right up until his tongue slid out and licked a solid wet stripe along Barry’s clavicle. Barry sucked in a sharp breath, his head falling back against the wood and his stomach muscles tightening.

Letting out a satisfied huff, Hartley proceeded to place a mixture of chaste and open-mouthed kisses across his breastbone and shoulders. When Barry’s breathing turned ragged, he ran his tongue up the side of his neck, and Barry responded by burying a hand in Hartley’s hair.

An embarrassing sound tore out of Barry’s throat when Hartley blew cool air against the new wet patch. The effect on Hartley was immediate and raw; he latched his mouth onto Barry’s pulse point and licked and nipped and _sucked_.

“ _Hartley!”_ The name clawed its way out of Barry like a plea for mercy even while his hand tightened in Hartley’s hair and held his head there.

Involuntarily, Hartley’s hips bridged the gap of their lower halves for a single, solitary thrust. The low, uncontrolled whine that escaped against Barry’s neck at the brush of his hardness against Barry’s thigh was almost indistinguishable from a sob. As if to make up for the show of weakness, his hands shifted to fist into the edges of the suit, his upper body pressed Barry more into the wall, and his mouth sucked _harder._

Barry was now gasping in each new breath like the next would be his last, yet even amidst his haze, his eyes danced around the room and lighted on a pile to his left. “ _Gah!—_ Wouldn’t those blankets— _ah!—_ be more comfortable for this?”

Hartley stilled his ministrations. “No. A bed is for lovers.”

Humming in agreement, Barry said, “And we’re friends.”

Perhaps it was because they were pressed so close together that Barry felt the shudder that wracked through Hartley. Even when that ended, Barry could feel the tremors running through his hands where they gripped his suit.

“Stop _saying_ that.” His voice sounded wretched. “We’re _not.”_

“Of course we are, Hart.”

“ _No.”_ He tore himself back from Barry’s grip, though he kept a tight hold on Barry’s suit, and glared at him. “You’ve made it very clear what you really think of me. What you _did_ to me—”

“Hartley—” One of Barry’s hands reached up to catch at the other man’s elbow, and whatever he saw in Barry’s face caused him to wrench away as though burned.

“I—I don’t like this game anymore. You’ve won, happy? You’ve won it, now _stop.”_

“What did I do to you? Hart?”

“Wow— _wow_. Your cruelty doesn’t end, does it?” His laugh started out broken and ended wet. “Fine. You want to hear it so bad from me? That it, Flash?”

What could have been so terrible to screw things up so much, Barry couldn’t help but wonder. He softened his voice even as dread coiled in his stomach like a snake ready to bite. “Please.”

_“You left me!”_ The words sounded wrenched from Hartley, his face open and tortured, the look in his eyes raw. “I begged and pleaded and called for your help, and you left me to die!”

“. . . _What?”_

“Sure—I had made _fast_ enemies with you, but you tout yourself as the hero of Central City. I had made my share of trouble, yet a part of me still _thought—_ ” He ran a hand up his face and through his mussed hair. “God, when I miscalculated the rate at which the Rathaway Industries building would collapse . . . _ha_ _,_ I had checked, you know, beforehand, that no one was in there at the time. Still, you flashed right on past me as it was coming down, looking for other people while I was there _on the ground floor_. I heard Cisco say over your comms, ‘Nevermind Hartley. He’s made his choices.’ I may not have superspeed, but as you raced on by, I _swear_ you glanced at me when I screamed for you. As you _left_ to look for people who _mattered.”_

“You matter, Hart.” It was the first thing he could think to say in the aftershocks of hearing that.

Hartley _flinched._

Barry hadn’t meant the words to be a blow, but how could they have been anything else? The Hartley he knew had been tossed out like a dirty secret not worth keeping by parents who were supposed to love him, had been used and betrayed and toyed with by a man he admired—and now this Hartley had been abandoned by a man he’d seen as a _hero._ Barry felt sick.

How could any version of himself ever—but no, Barry knew in his heart of hearts . . . he _remembered_ the first time around. The original timeline where he and Cisco and Caitlin had stuffed Hartley in the Pipeline like he was a meta instead of just a human inconvenience, how he let Cisco give Hartley hearing aids designed to amplify his Tinnitus for misbehavior. Without people like Hartley Rathaway turning out good by some timeline fluke, what sort of hero would Barry have turned into with every other enemy conveniently dying by accident, with his one and only attempt at reforming a villain resulting in Leonard Snart’s patronizing face hovering over his, spelling it out: _“I’m a criminal and a liar, and I hurt people and I rob them.”_

The fear that flickered briefly across Hartley’s pale and thin _—_ _how had Barry not noticed the sharp jut of bones and the hollowness of his cheeks until now—_ face seemed to answer ‘you become _this.’_ Blinking rapidly, Hartley locked his jaw and settled his gaze past Barry’s shoulder. “Now that you’ve had your fun, just take me back to Iron Heights and be done with it.”

Too many words clambered to get out of Barry’s throat at once—a denial, an apology, a reassurance—that he choked on them. The movement of Barry’s hand caught Hartley’s attention as he formed it into a fist and rubbed it in circles over his chest. ‘ _I’m sorry.’_

Hartley’s eyes widened. “You know ASL?” he breathed.

He gave him a watery smile and signed back, _‘Learned it for you.’_

Hartley was shaking his head as he took a step back. His right eye twitched. His lip began to quiver, and he sunk his teeth into it so hard that Barry winced in sympathy. “How far will you go for this _ruse_ _,_ Flash?”

“I care about you. So much. And I don’t know where to begin to make up for the pain I’ve caused you. But let me try, Hart, and I will. Every day if I have to, until you see that we’re frie—”

“Stop _toying_ with me! Stop _using me!_ Stop _LYING!”_ The last word rose in pitch, turning into a sonic screech that blasted Barry backwards against the wall.

Surviving on fumes of the Speedforce in his system meant that even his recovery time had slowed. So he was still lying, dazed on the floor with Hartley glaring hatefully down at him when Godspeed zipped into the room.

The movement of another Speedster in the dingy loft triggered Barry’s speed to automatically flow through his eyes to catch up. This was how he saw Godspeed take stock of the room, of Barry injured on the floor and Pied Piper standing over him. He saw the jealous tensing of Godspeed’s muscles, the angry inclination of his head at Hartley Rathaway who had dared to injure his prey. 

Barry moved the same millisecond the other Speedster did, thinking about glass that pierced Iris’s shoulder and the bullet that sunk into Joe’s skin—about what would happen if he wasn’t _fast enough._

But Barry was—he knew he was the moment a vibrating hand punched through his back and out through his chest. He knew the moment he locked eyes with Hartley, in the way that the hate bled out for shock.

While a hero should stand on his own two feet, Barry felt like Hartley wouldn’t begrudge him the hand that latched onto his shoulder for support. 

Time had caught up to Barry Allen at last, the Speedforce leaving him the same instant Godspeed’s hand did. Normal time resumed with Barry collapsing against Hartley’s chest, his knees brushing the floorboards. “You . . . okay, Hart?”

Instead of answering Barry, Hartley’s arms came up around him, holding him close as a glass-shattering scream rose out of him that blasted Godspeed through the loft wall and into the street below. With a reverence undeserved, Hartley brought Barry several steps over and lowered him onto the blanket pile.

“Like a lover,” Barry wheezed dazedly. 

“I . . .” He laid a hand over-top Barry’s head. “It’ll . . . be alright. I have a Speedster to handle right now, but what else is new? I’ll be back—” he made a strangled noise “—I’ll be back for you. I promise. I promise, Flash.”

And he sounded so sincere and Barry wasn’t dead _—_ _hand through a lung, not a heart_ _,_ his labored breaths seemed to say—and he didn’t want to make Hartley cry. Never wanted to make Hartley cry, but those eyes, so clear without his glasses, misted over like he _might_ _._ And he couldn’t have that. 

Lifting a hand, Barry caressed the side of Hartley’s face. “Barry.”

“What?”

“Name's Barry.”

Some tears did slide down then, for all Hartley did to swipe them away. “O—okay. Okay.” The smile that spread across his face was strained, but gentle and warm and so like Barry’s Hartley that he could have died right there a happy man.

All too soon, the Pied Piper was stepping away towards the hole he’d blasted through his own wall, gauntlets secured tight around his hands. On the threshold, he glanced over his shoulder. “Hang on. Don’t give up while I’m gone. Don’t give up on me, Barry.”

Barry grinned through his wheezing breaths. “Never again, Hart. Never again.”

Taking it like an oath, Hartley Rathaway slipped over the edge into the darkness, but Barry knew he was back on his way to finding his light.


End file.
